Inside The Hive With Nick Bilton

This week, New York Times reporter Sheera Frenkel, coauthor of the blockbuster book “An Ugly Truth: Inside Facebook's Battle for Domination,” describes her and coauthor Cecilia Kang's deep dive into the history and ambitions of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. How and why did Zuck allow his tech behemoth to become a hothouse of hate speech, misinformation and coordinated attacks on world governments? And what has he done about it? Frenkel explains to cohost Joe Hagan how Zuckerberg's pursuit of power has run roughshod over social responsibility, as he cashes in on Kumbaya connectivity instead. With Donald Trump suing Facebook for temporarily evicting him and Joe Biden accusing the platform of “killing people” by spreading vaccine misinformation, Zuckerberg keeps his eyes on the 5 billion customers that remain to be converted to the platform. An in-depth conversation. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Floods, wildfires, skies filled with smoke and ash—it’s been a summer full of alarming signs of climate change. This week, journalist and novelist Nathaniel Rich joins Joe Hagan on Inside the Hive to discuss the looming catastrophe we’ve known about for decades but have consistently failed to slow, let alone stop. Should we take the climate fight to politicians and corporations, or is our system too hopelessly broken to respond to the earth’s rising temperatures? How much do individual choices like eating vegan or driving electric cars really help? The author of Losing Earth: A Recent History talks about his personal response as he paints a portrait of ignorance and bad faith among the powers that be. Rich also suggests new ways to change and deepen our relationship to our planet in crisis—including the power of fiction. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

This week, we welcome cohost Emily Jane Fox back to the podcast from paid family leave to discuss some personal breaking news: the arrival of infant daughter J.R. last week and the implications for work-life balance, family, marriage and podcasting. Plus, a review of the summer news cycle, what readers of Vanity Fair can expect in weeks to come, and a squeak or two from the new podcast cohost. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

This week, veteran Hive correspondent Chris Smith talks to co-host Joe Hagan about the winner of the Democratic primary for New York mayor, Eric Adams, and his journey toward the most powerful office in the city. Smith has been covering city politics for more than two decades, through Bloomberg’s three terms and Bill DeBlasio’s seven tumultuous years, and understands better than most the risks and opportunities for a city trying to reinvent itself after the pandemic and the Black Lives Matter protests of last summer. Can a former policeman and savvy self-promoter like Adams lower crime, enact police reforms while also earning the trust of the NYPD and shepherd the city to prosperity? Chris Smith explains it all to you. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

This week, Vanity Fair special correspondent Nick Bilton returns to Inside the Hive to help cohost Joe Hagan (finally) understand what cryptocurrencies are — how they came to be, how they work, and where they’re headed. From Bitcoin to Ethereum, from Elon Musk’s favored Dogecoin to the dreaded “shitcoin," Bilton, who has covered technology for over a decade, links cryptocurrencies to the evolution of an Internet culture driven by speculators, conspiracists and opportunists — and then answers the $33,000 question (the current price of Bitcoin): Should we actually invest in these things? Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

On this week's episode of Inside the Hive, Emily Jane Fox talked to White House press secretary Jen Psaki about the administration's plans to pass paid leave and support working families, Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian about paternity leave and the stigma around fathers taking time off (if they even get it, that is), and Rent the Runway C.E.O. Jenn Hyman about how offering fair and robust leave to employees makes economic and moral sense for employers. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

On this week's episode of Inside the Hive, Joe Hagan and Emily Jane Fox talk about 60 hours of Beatles footage, the fallibility of memories, and recording moments big and small in our own lives. Plus: what's happening in Washington and what's to come next week.  Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

A year ago, when the pandemic was first raging, director Jon Chu faced a painful decision: He could send his new musical adaptation of Lin Manuel Miranda’s “In the Heights” straight to streaming on HBO or wait for the theaters to reopen once the pandemic was over—a depressingly indeterminate time. Now it looks like that decision has paid off. Chu and his film editor Myron Kerstein return to Inside the Hive to talk about the experience of keeping their dream alive while the world twisted and turned. The movie — about a community of immigrants friends and families struggling to keep their “suenitos” alive in New York’s Washington Heights — arrives in a poetic new context that not even Hollywood could have dreamed up: “In the Heights,” screening in 5,300 theaters in the U.S., is the first real blockbuster film to test the power of cinemas after a year of closure. Chu and Kerstein discuss the long journey to the screen, the influences and ideas that went into making it, Chu's desire to mint a new cast of unknown

On this week’s episode, Vanity Fair’s senior media correspondent Joe Pompeo breaks down what’s happened to all the news networks post-Trump and what he thinks will happen to the hosts, ratings, and news-obsessed viewers now. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Co-hosts Joe Hagan and Emily Jane Fox talk vaccine incentives, the two kinds of infrastructure we need to be investing in, and the joys and pains of taking a first reporting trip in more than a year. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

A year ago, when restauranteur Danny Meyer first stopped by Inside the Hive, the restaurant industry—and every industry, really—was in peril. He’d just laid off 2,000 employees, closed all of his restaurants, and had no idea how they could pivot or when things would get better. This week, he joins co-host Emily Jane Fox to discuss preparing to operate at 100 percent capacity as a vaccinated New York City roars back to life and how he thinks the business will change forever. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

On this very special episode of Inside the Hive, dear friend of the podcast Nick Bilton is back to interview author and reporter Brad Stone, whose new book on Jeff Bezos and his earth-shaking company—Amazon Unbound—is out this week from Simon & Schuster. In it, Stone traces the evolution of Amazon as a company, as well as the progression of Bezos himself from startup engineer to one of the most powerful men in the world. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

On this week’s episode of Inside the Hive, Emily Jane Fox sits down with the First Son to talk about his addiction, his dad, what makes a Biden love story, and why he thinks the GOP, and Don Jr. in particular, are obsessed with him. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

After the longest year in history—or four, to be honest—ABC News anchor and founder of meditation app 10 Percent Happier Dan Harris stops by this week’s episode of Inside the Hive to talk about meditation for skeptics, the toll a year of isolation takes on our mental health, and what we can all do to be just a little bit more at peace. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

This week, Inside the Hive cohost Joe Hagan interviews Sheila Nezhad, the Minneapolis activist whose candidacy for mayor against incumbent Jacob Frey has been powered by the protest movement in the wake of the murder of George Floyd. Nezhad gives an eyewitness account of the scene when former Officer Derek Chavin was convicted of murder and manslaughter this week, a verdict that left the city relieved but with unanswered questions about the future of law enforcement and racial justice. With the Justice Department investigating the practices of the Minneapolis Police Department, Nezhad sees an opening for a different kind of American city, one without a police department but with more social services and a larger safety net. Whether Nezhad's vision is unrealistic or inevitable is both the key to her political future and the knife’s edge of a national reckoning. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Her fame has endured. Her brand has expanded. The way the media has framed who she was and how she is talked about has changed. Paris Hilton sat down with Emily Jane Fox for an interview to talk about that shift, that sex tape, nostolgia culture, and life in quarantine on this week's episode of Inside the Hive. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

This week, cohosts Emily Jane Fox and Joe Hagan pour through the pages of Beautiful Things, the eye-popping new Hunter Biden memoir, to highlight the best revelations and insights—not only into a President’s son, but into the Biden presidency itself and this peculiar (but hopeful) moment in American history. A tearful and candid tale of addiction and familial love, the book describes in excruciating detail the death of Hunter's brother Beau, the Biden family's private struggles in the aftermath, and Hunter’s lurid descent into alcoholism and crack addiction. He also attempts to set the record straight on the Burisma controversy that made him the political whipping boy for Donald Trump. An Inside the Hive book review.Bonus: Speaking of beautiful things, Emily Jane Fox has a life-altering revelation of her own for podcast listeners. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

On this week's episode of Inside the Hive, co-hosts Joe Hagan and Emily Jane Fox dissect the allegations against Congressman Matt Gaetz—namely that he bankrolled the travel of a 17-year-old with whom he was romantically involved—and his puzzling spin on them. Plus, Infrastructure Week is for real this time, and perhaps Twitter is a construct we could all do without. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

The Black Lives Matter protests of 2020 catalyzed Black Americans far and wide, and CNN’s Don Lemon, the only African-American cable news anchor in primetime, was no different. Lemon joins Inside the Hive to discuss his bestselling new book, This Is the Fire: What I Say to My Friends About Racism. In it, Lemon describes how the Trump years exposed America’s racial wounds, but also cleared the way for a new era of accountability. "People are being held accountable and they cannot just say something bigoted or racist or insensitive or inappropriate with impunity anymore,” Lemon observes. But he also believes in forgiveness. Addressing free speech and “cancel culture,” Lemon says, "I think you have to allow people grace in the conversation and in the act of trying to do the right thing.” Despite the divisions of the last four years, Lemon remains optimistic about the promise of pluralism, if for no other reason than demographics and the logic of capitalism. “We're all gonna have to learn to get together because

Joe Hagan and Emily Jane Fox talk about returning to normal after this year, in terms of news coverage, daily routines, and the way we treat one another going forward. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices